The pop side of the classic: Santana, “Love of my life”

1999 Santana feat. Dave Matthews – Love of my life

Twenty-six studio albums, eight live albums, sixty-one singles and seven solo albums as well as various collaborations on albums by other artists… Could anyone deny that Santana – and its undisputed leader Carlos Santana for over sixty years – are part of the history of rock music? A band that has spanned the decades, going through various lineup changes but always maintaining the trademark of its founder’s unmistakable guitar.

In 1999, Santana, having reached their eighteenth album, found great success in the charts all over the world: Supernaturalwhich features collaborations with several guest artists, including Eric Clapton, Eagle-Eye Cherry, Lauryn Hill, Dave Matthews and CeeLo Green, will reach number one in the United States and in many other countries, including Italy, and is Santana’s best-selling album, the best-selling album by a Hispanic artist in the history of music and one of the best-selling albums of all time, with approximately 30 million copies worldwide.

A record-breaking album, in short, and part of its success is also due to a composer who lived over a hundred years earlier, Johannes Brahms. One of the main songs of the album, in fact, is Love of my lifewritten by Santana together with singer-songwriter Dave Matthews, one of the most interesting collaborations of the entire album, based on Symphony no. 3 in F major, op. 90 by Brahms, a composer who, so as not to deny the ease of contemporary musicians, is beautifully ignored in the credits, which attribute the piece to Matthews and Santana.

The fact that the German composer’s melody serves as a starting point for a song that presents several changes of atmosphere does not alter the fact that the sweet and captivating riff that Santana plays on the guitar is taken from the aforementioned work. THEwhere of My Life it begins with a syncopated drum and bass rhythm, over which a rapper introduces Carlos and the band; the verse and chorus consist of a call and response between Matthews’ voice and Carlos’ guitar. Just over halfway through the song the atmosphere changes radically and the band seems to return to the style of their first records: the pace accelerates and over a rousing Latin rhythm Santana performs a long solo in his particular style, and this is perhaps the most interesting part of the song, and the one that is not indebted to Brahms’ work.

This sheet is taken from the book “Rock Me Amadeus. The pop side of classical music, the classic heart of rock. When Classical meets Pop, Rock and Disco” by Davide Pezzi (Youcanprint, 252 pages, €19.50, available here) courtesy of the author.

What happens when Mozart, Bach or Beethoven come down from the podium of great music and find themselves among electric guitars, synthesizers and disco lights? “Rock Me Amadeus” explores the fascinating (and sometimes surprising) universe of pop, rock and disco reinterpretations of famous classical songs.

The book offers a journey that is both historical and curious, spanning decades of experiments, contaminations and revisitations. There is no shortage of pages dedicated to the less successful versions – testimonies of an era and a taste – which help to understand even better the inexhaustible strength of classical music as a source of inspiration.

With an accessible and documented style, the author guides the reader through anecdotes, records, musicians and arrangements, showing how the dialogue between apparently distant musical worlds can generate new forms of creativity, between genius and (sometimes) naive clumsiness.